Lord of the Ring

I’m in the driver’s seat of a Nissan 370z at Brands Hatch and I’m travelling extremely fast. I’m travelling extremely fast sideways. I don’t feel 100 percent in control. In fact, I’ll be honest, I don’t feel any percent in control. It’s brilliant.

I’d been invited to come down and experience the national finals of the Nissan GT Academy, a competition run for players of the PS3 game Gran Turismo 5 (GT5). The prize is a chance to become a professional race driver in the Dubai 24-Hour International.

All you have to do to enter is upload your fasted lap time on a specific track on GT5. Think of it as being a little like The X Factor but with computer games and indoorsy types instead of Simon Cowell and crushed dreams.

The best thing is that it’s no effort at all to enter. If you fancy yourself as a race driver you can just have a go. If you kick ass you can tell your mates how good you are, if you’re terrible you can sell the game and get Call of Duty instead.

There was a surprising mix of people who had come this far in the competition. OK, so there were no girls but that’s probably because they can’t drive, right? Huh fellas? Am I right? But one of the competitors was an Olympic-level decathlete who’d had to retire owing to an injury. But who am I trying to kid? Aside from one or two exceptions, it was mostly your stereotypical computer game nerds. I fitted in perfectly.

The only problem is that I’m a bit more chatty than many of my geeky brothers and some of the conversations I tried to have were horribly awkward. The first guy I spoke to looked at me like I was from another planet. I asked him, “So, have you ever driven a racing spec car before?” He stared at me with a blank expression and there was a long pause. A painfully long pause. He then said, “I know how to drive a car.” I tried again. “I meant have you ever driven, like, a sports car?” Another dreadful pause. I bitterly regretted starting the conversation. This was awful. “I play Gran Turismo,” he finally said. I gave up on him at this point, both in terms of the interview and his future.

Sadly, I wasn’t participating in the competition, but I would be able to compare the handling of a Nissan 370z in GT5 against how it drove in real life. Gran Turismo is considered to be one of the most realistic driving games available, so as an avid gamer (read: social pariah) I was keen to see just how accurately games can simulate driving. It was a geek dream come true for me.

The only car I’ve ever driven in reality is a Peugeot 205. A formidable machine yes, but not quite in the same league as a race-tuned 370z. I’ve never raced anything before. I think I did 50mph in a 40mph zone once but rest assured I was very disappointed in myself. I couldn’t decide if I was more excited or terrified. I later worked out that it was about a 60/40 split in favour of the terror.

I began by getting used to the 370z in GT5. I raced for around half an hour and felt like I had a pretty good idea of how the car behaved (ish). However, when it came to getting into the car for real, I was suddenly nervous. Would I be able to drive a real 370z round a track after only having experienced it virtually?

In short, the game compares amazingly well to the real thing. I’ve based that mainly on the fact I was absolutely dreadful at handling both the virtual and the real car. Turn too hard into a corner and the car stops responding in the same way it does in real life and over-braking will give the back end of the car a life of its own.

It’s obviously easier to be more aggressive in GT5 – you don’t have to worry about damaging the car and there is a significantly lower chance you’ll kill yourself if you crash (although I’m sure that someone, somewhere has managed it) – but for the most part driving as you would in real life is the most effective course of action.

It’s this lack of risk that lies at the heart of the difference between virtuality and reality. The car may behave in the same way, but the lack of inertia removes the thrill of driving fast. It makes it far easier to judge how much more pressure the car can take before it becomes unresponsive.

I found myself making simple mistakes when driving in real life, whereas in the game I was constantly improving my lap times. It’s amazing how much easier it is to drive well if you’re placed in a static environment. It’s just not as exciting.

At one point on the track I managed to turn the windscreen wipers on instead of change up a gear. My co-driver was shouting to ignore them, I was screaming because I’d just shifted forward in my seat and smashed my groin against the bottom strap of my five-point harness. Whereas in GT5, I managed to plough into a wall at 110mph and seconds later I was racing again.

The Nissan GT Academy is the best way for ‘normal’ people to get the chance to race professionally. And when lap times are the only measure of success you won’t even have to worry about trying to impress Simon Cowell with a sob story.